After many years, I was back in the biology department at Cornell--the Plant Science building. I'd been offered a temporary research job here, in Mr. Wood's lab at the end of a long hall, behind a door I'd never seen before. The lab had the unfinished aspect of a warehouse or temporary quarters.

For the weekend, we were going on a departmental retreat at a house in the Adirondack woods. I agreed to share costs with some grad students, and we rode up in a van. En route we shared food; I brought out a bag of Royal Hawaiian potato chips. The man sitting next to me was from Hawaii, and said "That's the commonest brand back home, but stateside, it's very expensive." I said "I bought it for 79 cents at Rainbow Foods." He was surprised at the bargain.

When we reached the retreat, the van driver of the van, a large bossy woman, said "I just had $3000 worth of work done on the van. You'll have to reimburse me." I regretted we hadn't explicitly discussed costs before setting out. I argued "You have to amortize the cost of the repairs over their expected life! We should only be responsible for a small fraction attributable to our actual usage." She wouldn't listen.

The house was normally a religious retreat, though we'd come to discuss biology. I was told "Your room's on the second floor," and was directed up a complex stairway that branched into a maze. I tried different flights of steps, but came to a barrier each time. I managed to climb over a couple of them, but found the staircase just ended in mid-air.

A young man offered to help, but it turned out he too had no idea how to reach the second floor. Giving up, he decided to pitch his tent in the yard. It was snowing outside, but he took off his sweatshirt. "I'm not bothered by cold," he said. "I always go shirtless in the snow." Fine for him, but I hadn't come prepared to snow-camp.

As night fell, I wandered the camp, still unsure where I'd be sleeping. In the parking lot I found a crowd of strangers, milling around an older woman, short and perhaps Asian. Pointing at peculiar round tracks in the snow, which circled behind the retreat building, she announced "These are the tracks of the Beast from Revelations. They signal the Last Judgment is at hand." I asked "You mean they're tracks of Leviathan?" The prints were perfectly circular, about two feet in diameter, with slightly raised centers. They were the sort of tracks you'd expect from an elephant with oil-drum legs.

The woman was right about the Last Judgment. The cars in the parking lot began moving by themselves, lining up in neat rows. Rainbow-colored haloes surrounded the people, cars, buildings, and trees. A brilliant light shone from the sky, and I saw vague shapes descend. There was a mechanical noise, so I'm still not sure if I saw angels or aliens.

I re-entered the retreat house, but it had turned into a huge hall, like a gym or a convention center at a fairground--not in the least elegant. Hundreds of people in 1950's clothing were materializing in the hall. The dead were resurrecting! I recognized a few celebrities like Bob Hope and Adlai Stevenson. They all danced to fifties pop music, celebrating.

But amid the revelers, I met a sad woman. She was middle-aged, thin and poor-looking. A girl in her late teens walked up to her. She had only one breast, and her face was badly deformed. They stared at one another, and people around us stopped dancing. The girl said, with a mixture of grief and bitterness, "I thought I'd be given a whole body after I died," and walked off. The middle-aged woman looked guilty. She said "My daughter was born with congenital malformations. They could have been fixed by extensive plastic surgery, but we were poor, and got turned away by various hospitals and agencies. Eventually, I just gave up trying to get help for her. I... I neglected her. When she was 17 or 18, she killed herself." She paused. I was startled that she was vague about the timing of her daughter's death. "I... at the time, I supposed it was just as well she died. But after her suicide, I was riddled by grief, regret, and guilt...." She added bitterly, "I can't believe this is all there was to life." She didn't say it, but somehow I knew: she drank herself to death.

The mother sat down in the middle of the dance floor and wrote a letter, apologizing to her daughter. She signed it and stood, peering around the sea of dancers. She said "Now how do I find her to deliver it?"

Instantly, her daughter walked up again--only this time it took a moment for us to recognize her, for her face and body were healed! Mother and daughter had a joyful reunion...

Happy ending? Mostly. Except for one odd detail. It's true the daughter was healthy and whole, but I couldn't call her normal. She was as gray as an old movie. She had no color at all.

What was still missing?

As I woke, at 4:30 AM, I wondered what else these two had to resolve.

BIOGRAPHY

I'm a 54-year-old woman with a doctorate in biology from Cornell. I often dream vividly. I do have a daughter who's 18, but she's not deformed.

NOTES

Returning to Cornell represents returning to a traumatic part of my life.

Wood's lab--pun on "you're not out of the woods yet?" The revelation of a hidden door is echoed later in the dream by the retreat, set in real "woods" and featuring another sort of"revelation."

The bargain on Royal Hawaiian potato chips contrasts with the hidden costs of the van ride.

The shared van ride, the steep bill = I'm involved in a cooperative enterprise with people who manage money badly, who sometimes expect me to bail them out.

The bossy driver could be any of several people. At least I didn't give in to her extortion! The image here may be, that the segment of life's journey upon which I am currently traveling has immediate frustrations.

Assigned a room on the second floor of a spiritual retreat = something about "spiritual levels"?

Stair-maze = frustration, blocked from reaching to a higher level! It's unclear if the level I'm trying to reach is a career level, or a spiritual level, or both. Since I'm trying to write a book which combines biology and spirituality (title "God in our Genes"), probably both.

Man who camps in snow = I think the 'snow man' may be my brother in law, who is fond of giving me impractical suggestions about what to do with my life. Whoever he is, he's not much help.

Older woman who identifies tracks = ?

The Beast's tracks are like oil-drums in the snow = the end of the world will come from war or climate change based on oil? When I woke I realized that Leviathan was a sea creature and could not have made the tracks.

The fifties resurrected: my childhood?

Bob Hope: "Hope springs eternal," indeed!

Adlai Stevenson: He lost twice to Eisenhower--is he idealism defeated by a practical, conservative world? But here he's reborn...

Is the dream saying I need a retreat to revive hope and idealism in my life? If so, what and where?

Biological/spiritual retreat = ? Potential puns here! Could mean anything from just camping in the woods, to solitary meditation, to escaping my work environment, to menopause (a "biological retreat")

I return to a place in my past and find rooms and passages I didn't know existed (the opening scene).

Frustrating travel (the stairs, the van)

Offers of help that turn out to be remarkably unhelpful (the driver, the young man)...

Mistaking the Beast of Revelations for Leviathan: such very specific errors are not common in my dreams.

LIFE-ISSUES RAISED

Is this about my mother? The context, after all, is the 1950s resurrected--my own childhood.

The dream hints that I have worked through two big issues and have one to go.

Facial distortion = how one presents oneself? Feeling one is ugly? Or defective?

One undeveloped breast = something's only half-developed! Sexual maturity, or the ability to nourish others, perhaps?

Colorlessness = an unresolved issue!

I think this dream is about me and my mother, rather than about my relationship to my daughter. My late teens were nightmarish, and I did attempt suicide when I was 18. My mother completely withdrew from me emotionally when I entered puberty, and we were only partially reconciled at the time of her death in 1983. Having a daughter this age has brought a lot of very painful buried memories to the surface. Seeing her blossom, I can't help grieving a bit over what I missed.

MORAL

Even Heaven itself can be marred by unhealed guilt and resentment. It deforms both the resenter AND the resented. I must let go. In the end, so must we all.